Asphodel: The Second Volume of the Muse Chronicles Page 7

Nathaniel wasn’t sure how long he was lost in his memory. He deduced it was a discernible amount of time as the attic around them was on the verge of refolding. A roll of thunder signaled the turning of the pop-up page, unsettling the dust on the sewing machine, rattling the frames, and forcing the trunks to move half a centimeter from their original locations. Even the stars outside of the window were monetarily diagnosed as schizophrenic, skipping about like fairies in a child’s fantasy world.

  “Mr. Cauliflower,” Annette addressed him again. “You’re sitting on the trunk that my muse-in-training heartstrings are telling me to take with us to the second act of this production.”

  He jumped up from the trunk to allow her access. The green trunk, which he had fallen upon for support at the time of his prodigious recollections, possessed a hard piece of old masking tape on the top. On it was a single name written in youthful scribble, “Phillip.”

  “There isn’t a second part to this inspiration, Miss Redmond. We’re already out of time.”

  Annette’s eyes went wide.

  “There’s no reason to panic,” he told her, adding the word “yet” as he grabbed one handle of the trunk. Annette grabbed the other handle. They moved it to the center of the room. The wooden rafters beneath their feet quivered under the pressure of the pop-up book’s eminent end. “What puzzle piece follows?” he asked.

  “It’s not the trunk itself,” Annette told him with indication of insecurity. “It’s the items in the trunk that will provide the catalyst.”

  “Well then,” Nathaniel told her. “Let’s get this trunk open.” But, much to their disappointment, the trunk was locked without a key in sight. Nathaniel took a deep breath and patiently asked Annette, who looked on the cusp of distress, if her heartstrings had any suggestions. “Miss Redmond, are you with me?” It was obvious from the shell-shocked look in her eyes that she was not.

  “I . . . I can’t . . .” Annette stammered. She was focusing more on the moving floorboards than her own instincts “I can’t concentrate with things shaking so much.”

  “Miss Redmond!” Clearly, Nathaniel addressing her was making very little impact. “Miss Redmond, I need you to take a breath.”

  Annette started to take a few deep breaths. With each breath she took, the dismantling of the attic around her progressively worsened. Annette’s eyes were not on Nathaniel. They were on the single light bulb and chain hanging from the ceiling moving like a pendulum gone certifiable.

  “Look at me, Miss Redmond.”

  “I can’t do this,” she told him.

  “Yes, you can,” he challenged her.

  Annette shook her head. “No, I can’t. I’m not this ‘Annette Slocum’ woman, Mr. Cauliflower. I don’t have muse-in-training heartstrings. Everything that I’ve done up to this point has been a hunch; maybe it was beginner’s luck but, at this exact moment, I don’t feel anything. All I feel is a sense of dread that the inspiration is going to end and the contents of our trunk aren’t going to be seen by our client, causing yet another chain reaction. I’m supposed to be getting married to my fiancé in a sanctuary covered in yellow tulips! I’m not supposed to be here, in this attic, feeling this way! I just - ” Annette’s words were cut short by one simple word:

  “Muse!” Nathaniel had clasped both of his hands on Annette’s shoulders. His eyes caught hers and, as they did, Annette was entranced by Nathaniel’s sagacity.

  He was suddenly at a loss for words to say to her. The last muse he had officially inspired had been in his Second Generation, many Lite-Brite boards and thousands of colored pegs ago! He told Annette, “The ceiling and walls are standing, are they not? The floor may be vibrating but it’s still beneath our feet! The setting around us may be on the brink of conclusion, but there is still time. There is always more time.” Nathaniel had more to say. “I’ve seen what you can do. I’ve seen you tackle sixty-eight of these violet envelopes, back to back before you retired. You survived. You did it! Honestly! It was miraculous . . .” As he said this, Nathaniel knew these words had once been spoken to him, and were genuinely being replayed. He added as an aside to Annette, “. . . truly miraculous! Please, believe that even things that may seem impossible can happen!”

  “Do you really think so?” Annette asked.

  To which, Nathaniel nodded. “Take another breath.”

  Annette took a breath.

  Yes, the walls were still standing and, yes, the ceiling was also resolute above their heads; Nathaniel had to wonder for how much longer.

  “All right,” Annette said. “How do you open a lock without a key?”

  “That’s my Muse,” Nathaniel encouraged. “How do you open a lock without a key?”

  Annette rushed over to the female bust. There she found a thick sewing needle poking through the right shoulder, which faced the wall. She took the sewing needle and raced along the gradually rupturing floorboards. She sat cross-legged at the trunk fitting the needle into the lock, muttering a prayer. After a few seconds, the lock gave way. She looked at Nathaniel and nodded.

  Nathaniel nodded to Annette. The trunk lid was then opened and they looked inside. There were books with awe-inspiring pictures of the cosmos, star charts wrapped in frail hardened rubber-bands, a baby mobile made to look like the solar system and nine packages of unopened glow-in-the-dark stars.

  “Well . . .” said Nathaniel.

  “Well,” said Annette. She grabbed four packages of glow-in-the-dark stars and handed them to Nathaniel. “You take the ceiling; I’ll take the books and the star charts.”

  “What about the rest of the glow-in-the-dark stars?” Nathaniel asked.

  “We’re saving them for something special,” Annette replied, standing up and taking a handful of the empty frames. “It’s a last-second project you and I can work on together.”

  Nathaniel nodded, tore open the plastic, and went straight to work affixing the four packages of glow-in-the-dark stars to the easily accessible ceiling. There was a mixture of sizes ranging from small to large, which he scattered about the ceiling in attempt to emulate the night sky. His hands were steady, but the ceiling itself was shaking so badly he had to attach, and reattach the stars with the supplied putty until they remained put.

  As he did this, Annette worked with the empty frames and star charts. She ripped open a packet of stars using the smallest ones as make-shift cornerstones for the backside. She stretched the star charts along the edges of the frames and set them on display, propping them against the walls. She lavishly organized the cosmos books around the frames with covers facing out so, in a short time, the collected images resembled a ring of deep space encircling the perimeter.

  She looked at Nathaniel who affixed the last star to the ceiling. He also hung the child’s mobile from a protruding nail head. The frames, books, stars and mobile were instantly unaffected by the trembling atmosphere when placed.

  He joined her at the exposed back wall of the attic with the remaining packages of stars.

  “What’s the plan?” he asked.

  Annette told him the phrase they were to put on the wall. Only the wall remained as the attic was eaten away by the same page-flitting darkness that had devoured the bowling alley. While the inspiration came to an end, Nathaniel watched Annette take one final look at the message they had left for her client: “Phillip, Don’t Forget.” (Complete with even the punctuation!)

  With that, the ground gave way beneath them, extracting both Nathaniel and Annette out of the inspiration and returning them to Annette’s cathedral office.

  They stood in a comforting blade of sunlight, basking in its warmth. Nathaniel looked at Annette.

  Annette looked at Nathaniel. “I appreciate what you did for me,” was all Annette could say.

  These words struck a chord inside of Nathaniel. He wished he had heard these words from Annette on that snowy November day when he was eighteen.

  *

  There was a great snowfall on the November morning when eighteen-year-old Nathaniel
shuffled to the root cellar to collect the copy of Les Misérables. What troubled Nathaniel was when he discovered that someone was already there, at his table and chair, waiting. The individual was Jonas, Annette’s childhood bully, who was actively responsible for destroying her previous library books.

  “I don’t know how you do it,” nineteen-year-old Jonas told Nathaniel. “But I do know that you have plans to give this book to her.” He held the novel in front of Nathaniel’s eyes. “So you want to be her friend, is that it? Share with her your secrets about how you repair the books? What do you think she’ll do? What do you think she’ll say? Did you think she’d fall wistfully into your arms? Is that it? Did you think you could fix her the same way you fixed the books?”

  Nathaniel knew better than to answer Jonas’ questions. Answering them would only give Jonas more power. Nathaniel saw Jonas’ involvement with the library books more of an annoyance and, perhaps on some level, a test Nathaniel was meant to overcome. Nathaniel fathomed, from Annette’s perspective, Jonas was tormenting her.

  “Well, regardless of what you thought would happen,” Jonas went on, “things have drastically changed in the months that you’ve been working down here. Her father died from heart complications. And also, Annette is married to a detestable car salesman named Lyle.”

  During that afternoon, Nathaniel was shown the Slocum household where Annette had taken the role of housewife. The tumble-weed type bush beside the mailbox at the side of the road was partially caked with heavy snow. Nathaniel’s shoes crunched in the snow as he made his way up the front drive. It was a different driveway, a different life, all together. Nathaniel found his way to the front living room window. He looked behind him to witness the uninhabited winter wasteland that was her new neighborhood before pressing his face against the glass, peering inside. Nathaniel noticed a wedding photo of Annette and Lyle on an end table. Nathaniel felt hopelessness creep within him, which caused his heart to slowly fracture.

  Nathaniel walked up to the doorstep of the house. From out of the folds of his winter coat, he removed a parcel wrapped with wedding paper. Nathaniel turned the parcel over. There was a taped hand handwritten note that read the following message:

  Annette,

  Sorry I couldn’t get this to you any sooner. Hope this gives you peace in the present situation.

  Nathaniel then turned the package right-side up, placing it on the porch by the door. As the snow continued to fall, erasing his footsteps, Nathaniel began the long trek home feeling frostbitten both inside and out. That was the day that Nathaniel stopped feeling; it was a numbness that he felt until his murder many years later and, even now, in the afterlife.

  *

  “You’re welcome, Miss Redmond,” Nathaniel told Annette, coming out of his memory. He turned and left Annette alone in her office.

  Yes, Nathaniel had an exterior to himself that was almost impenetrable since his eighteenth year in his last life. However, even the slightest change in breaking down that barrier could eventually cause his personal ramparts to collapse for good. Nathaniel felt in his pocket for a single, tiny glow-in-the-dark star which he had taken as a keepsake of Annette’s latest inspiration; from when he considered feelings that he had not allowed experience in a very long time.

  CHAPTER 6: INSIDE THE CANVAS’ PAINTED CIRCUS TENT

  While the living world trusted innumerable categories of clocks and wristwatches, which heartlessly ticked away trivial seconds, minutes, hours, days and even years, the afterlife participated in its own inimitable method of gauging the time. During a routine Generation, a muse’s time was calculated by the amount of pegs that filled a single Lite-Brite grid. In the case of the current Nine Greatest Muses, time was measured by the amount of pegs that disappeared from the deep bins in each of their offices. Judging by the dwindling numbers, it could be ascertained that the muses worked attentively on each assignment. Envelopes were delivered to their postboxes, and those inspirations were administered, one right after the other, without pause. Seeing a project to its conclusion gave Nathaniel a suitable substitute for the unfinished love story involving him and Evangeline. Nathaniel was so thorough in reassigning those inspirations that, save for Annette who was waiting on her third violet envelope, no one had a moment to unwind.

  It came as no surprise when they were given a slight respite from their trials. The recompense for their labors came in the form of Nathaniel’s second fastidiously organized feast in the conference room. Nathaniel was assiduous in preparing the table for his guests; so much, in fact, that he measured the distances between the formal plates, elegant silverware and sparkling glasses to such precision as to be militantly sophisticated. The tines on the forks, and the slanted table spoons, were pointed down. Knives were pointed in toward the plates; spoons were also placed face-down. Even the dessert-ware had their proper place above the plate. There was an abundance of empty crystal plates purposefully located around the table. White cloth napkins were flawlessly folded into erect triangles and positioned to the left of the dinner plates.

  Nathaniel’s three hors d’oeuvres consisted of the subsequent menu: a Caprese salad with fresh basil, sliced tomatoes and mozzarella on their own separate dishes, including a watercress soup in individual bowls decorated elegantly with swirls of cream and a side of goat cheese. Thirdly, a notable Tapendale with finely pureed chopped olives, capers, anchovies and olive oil which acted as a spread for the brittle crackers lining the perimeter around it. Comprised main courses were primed on brass charger plates: a steamy roast duck in orange sauce, succulent braised beef and veal rolls with cooked barley marinated in vegetable stock, speckled with peas and sweet corn and, lastly, Lobster Thermidor drenched in a thick layer of melted butter. For dessert he produced poached pears in a port wine topped with caramel spice, a moist chocolate truffle cake, and pastries steadily piled to the conference room ceiling. Nathaniel supplied bubbling pots of coffee, chilled ice water in glass pitchers and even went so far as to flaunt diverse unopened bottles dated their best years: Chablis, Cabernet, Malbec and a wider selection of other red and dry white wines.

  “Oh how I’ve missed these meals,” Lucas said as the hors d’oeuvres were set in front of him. He said as an aside to Icarus, who sat to his right “It’s about the only thing I’ve really missed about this place to be honest.”

  “Is that so, Mr. Richardson?” Icarus asked him. Icarus’ voice had a heavy Greek accent, which coaxed a question from Lucas as to the Third Generation Muse’s origins. As Nathaniel sat a helping of the hors d’oeuvres soup in front of him, Icarus explained: “I come from a Greek island known as Crete, where the palace of Knossos resided. The ruins, I hear, still exist today.”

  “Do they really?” Lucas asked, hoping for clarification. “When did you live there?”

  “During the Bronze Age, dating back to almost 1600 B.C.,” Icarus told him.

  “You look young for having been alive back then,” Lucas offered. “Also, the name Icarus. I’ve heard that before. Part of Greek Mythology?”

  “Ovid,” Fiona smiled. “He was one of my favorite clients.”

  “You inspired Ovid?” Harriet asked Fiona.

  Fiona said humbly, “among other poets. But yes, Mr. Richardson, Icarus is the very same figure from the Greek myth, forever immortalized as one of mythology’s most epic escapes.”

  “And yet there are some that would say that I never quite left Crete,” Icarus said, hinting to his demise shortly after having taken flight from his homeland. Icarus took a sip of his soup, politely indicating that he didn’t have anything more to say on the matter. He then asked Lucas: “And you? Where and when do you come from, Mr. Richardson?”

  “Please, call me Lucas!” Lucas said, glowing, “I was born in the Midwest, in America, in a more modern day than you. I dreamed of someday visiting other states, perhaps exploring the world. Anyway, I finally ended up in Portland, Oregon where I became a music teacher.” There was a shadow of misery that passed over Lucas’ face as
he remembered his heartache. “After I lost my best friend in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11, I was visited by a stranger while in my classroom sorting music.”

  Nathaniel indifferently circled the table offering the hors d’oeuvres to his guests, setting food before Mr. Andrews, Mr. Dunbar and Harriet. He didn’t look at Lucas, nor did he acknowledge that he had been an imperative part of the story.

  “The visitor didn’t say much,” Lucas went on. “But I suppose, in retrospect, it wasn’t really anything that he said, you know? It was the violet envelope that he handed to me that provided the catalyst.”

  Nathaniel stopped at Ms. Pavlova’s setting, carefully laying the hors d’oeuvres. There was a moment of silence that passed over the room. He had been too intent on keeping his attention from Lucas to notice that his long ago client was steadily staring in Nathaniel’s direction. He timidly accepted the awareness and looked at Lucas.

  “Inside the violet envelope,” Lucas verbally reenacted the events, “was a single guitar pick. An object which, when placed in my hands, helped cultivate my survival. Right after giving it to me he was gone. To this day I’ve never had the opportunity to thank my muse. When I was a Seventh Generation muse, I wondered who it was that inspired me, and considered that perhaps it hadn’t been a muse at all; maybe it was a complete stranger unaffiliated with these offices. How could I have known that the muse who inspired me was the chef who made such mouth-watering meals between inspirations?”

  The question sounded hypothetical so Nathaniel was tentative to answer. It was true that Nathaniel had inspired Lucas, and he was fully aware of how the catalyst had changed Lucas’ life. But he had a reason for not introducing himself to his client, and a very good reason at that. It had been a reason that he kept to himself even during this awkward moment.

  Lucas raised a glass of Malbec. “To Mr. Cauliflower, who saved me and, furthermore, who sets us all out to save others!”